A lawyer in China has been reprimanded after submitting court materials generated with artificial intelligence (AI) that contained fabricated case numbers, fake legal precedents and altered legal provisions during an ongoing trial.
The incident came to light during a hearing at the Xiling District People’s Court in Yichang, Hubei Province, involving a case related to the alleged sale of non-medicinal products falsely marketed as medicine.
In an effort to support the client’s claims, the lawyer submitted several legal cases as reference materials. However, the presiding judge discovered numerous inconsistencies after checking the documents during the hearing.
One of the submitted cases used a genuine court judgment and official website link but contained a fabricated summary of the ruling that misrepresented the court’s actual findings. Another document cited a judgment from a court in another province complete with a case number and a link to the China Judgments Online database. When the judge verified the information, the case number did not exist and the entire case had been fabricated.
The court also found that another reference contained a legitimate case number, but it actually belonged to an unrelated criminal judgment involving the offence of assisting cybercrime, rather than the legal issue described in the submission. In addition, some materials included altered judicial interpretation provisions issued by China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate, while others misrepresented the contents of official government notices by inventing key legal provisions.
When questioned by the court, the lawyer admitted that the materials had been compiled by an assistant using AI tools and were submitted without being thoroughly verified beforehand.
Following further examination, the court confirmed that several of the cited authorities were inaccurate and had no legal reference value. The judge ruled that lawyers have a professional duty to verify every document submitted to the court and stressed that reliance on AI cannot excuse the submission of false or misleading materials.
The lawyer was formally reprimanded in court for failing to carry out proper checks before filing the documents.
The judge acknowledged that AI can improve efficiency in tasks such as legal research, case retrieval and document preparation. However, the court warned that AI-generated content may contain fabricated information, inaccurate case references or altered legal texts if not independently verified.
The court reminded legal practitioners that accuracy, authenticity and professional diligence remain fundamental principles of the justice system. While artificial intelligence can be a valuable tool, it cannot replace a lawyer’s responsibility to exercise independent legal judgment and ensure every submission is factually and legally correct.
